“The simplest explanation for the resistance to avant-garde music is that human ears have a catlike vulnerability to unfamiliar sounds, and that when people feel trapped, as in a concert hall, they panic. In museums and galleries, we are free to move around, and turn away from what bewilders us. It’s no surprise, then, that Cage has always gone over better in non-traditional spaces.”
I agree with this statement. Humans in general are afraid, or hesitant, towards the unknown. It is not surprising that unfamiliar sounds would discomfort people. This is exactly what John Cage wanted to study.
“John Cage was the first composer in the history of music who raised the question by implication that maybe music could be an art form rather than a music form.”
This is interesting because personally I see all music as an art form. All music is art, but not all art is music.
“Cage held that an artist can work as freely with sound as with paint: he changed what it meant to be a composer, and every kid manipulating music on a laptop is in his debt.”
I agree with this sentiment that the sounds you have to make music are just like the artist’s brushes they have to make a painting. Both music and visual art manipulate tools provided to spread messages, create meaning, and invoke feelings.
“Cage’s passion for silence, it seems, had political roots.”
I feel that all works of art are self-indulgent to some extent. If they weren’t, there would be no spirit or heart behind them. Because works of art are self-indulgent, a person’s work of art informs other people about them.
“Beneath the plinking of junk-yard percussion and the chiming of the prepared piano was an unsettling new idea about the relation of music to time.”
The relationship between music and time has always been substantial. For example, you know what time period certain genres of music came from because they are so distinct and unique. What is interesting about music and time, is that while music is a reflection of time passing, it also transcends time. Music, in other words, is timeless. A song will live on forever, it will persist throughout history, regardless of when it was created.
“Works would be structured simply in terms of durations between events.”
This sounds like the visual concept of negative space, contextualized by a music-making/sound design standpoint.
“He writes, “Listening to or merely thinking about" ‘4'33" led composers to listen to phenomena that would have formerly been considered nonmusical”—sustained tones, repeating patterns, other murmurs of the mechanical world. . . He also spurred the emergence of ambient music, sound art, and other forms of relating sound to particular spaces.”
I think it’s cool how much of an impact he made on the music world.
Something I found interesting was Cage’s comment that his sounds do not repeat themselves. Music is appealing to listeners because it is predictable, usually with an unpredictable element thrown into the song. Our brains will expect to hear certain notes in a song and the song will play them. But all of Cage’s noises are unpredictable, making them special.
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